 "Consumerism push triggers 15% annual growth of packaging sector")
With consumerism catching up fast in the country, the packaging industry has seen a 15% annual growth over the last five years, Union Minister Y S Chowdhary has said.
The packaging industry has a major role to play in boosting sales of products besides maintaining their quality, said the Minister of State for Science and Technology, who was the chief guest at the convocation function of Indian Institute of Packaging (IIP) here last evening.
Last year, the growth rate of packaging industry was to the tune of 18 per cent, Chowdhary said while giving away gold, silver and bronze medals to the award winners and convocation certificates to students for 20th Graduate Diploma in Packaging and 30th Post Graduate Diploma courses of IIP.
The minister also said that the centre gives lot of grants for 'start-up' projects in Technology Development Board.
"We also have bio-technology labs and we do fund start-up projects and R&D ventures," he said.
Also Read
"The government is seriously contemplating to spread science and technology across India. The centre is also involved in collecting technology transfer sets in the past 20 years. We do have money and would like to use this money to support start-up projects as it would help in saving a lot of foreign exchange," he said.
"Packaging is increasingly gaining importance as an important aspect in successful international trade. In today's context, packaging plays a definitive role in meeting and maintaining the growth of national economy and GDP," Ajay Kumar Bhalla, Director General of Foreign Trade, who was a special guest at the function, said.
"The change of global trends of packaging has got a great impact due to the change in consumer behaviour of any society. Due to this, the packaging industry needs to be geared up in terms of packaging innovations to satisfy the demand of consumers and to meet the market requirement," said Dr Inderjit Singh, Additional Secretary, Department of Science and Technology.
"The main objective of the institute is to promote the export market by way of innovative package design and development and to upgrade the packaging standards at the national level," IIP Director Dr N C Saha said.
Apart from Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi and Hyderabad, IIP plans to add four more units soon at Ahmedabad, Kakinada, Bengaluru and Guwahati.
Dr Saha said that IIP, which is regarded as the largest packaging institute in the world in terms of infrastructural facilities for promotion of education in packaging, is involved in research and development and training and education in the field of packaging.
In 1985, the institute started two-year Post Graduate Diploma Course in Packaging with 19 students and has produced until now 5,000 packaging professionals who are employed in India and MNCs, he said.
